BIBLIOGRAPHIES OF MODERN AUTHORSGEORGE SAINTSBURY[This list is a selection.]A PRIMER OF FRENCH LITERATURE. Clarendon Press. 1866 (fourth edition, revised, 1912).JOHN DRYDEN. Macmillan. 1878. (English Men of Letters Series.)A SHORT HISTORY OF THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF LE SAGE. Privately printed, London, 1881.A SHORT HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE. Clarendon Press. 1882 (Current edition, 1917).FRENCH LYRICS. Kegan Paul. 1882. (Parchment Library.)MARLBOROUGH. Long. 1885. (English Worthies.)A HISTORY OF ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE. Macmillan. 1887 (ninth edition, 1907).[The material in this volume deals with the larger "Elizabethan" period from Wyatt and Surrey to the Restoration.]MANCHESTER: A HISTORY OF THE TOWN. Longmans. 1887.ESSAYS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE, 1780–1860. Percival. 1890.THE EARL OF DERBY. Dent. 1890. Prime Ministers of Queen Victoria.ESSAYS ON FRENCH NOVELISTS. Percival. 1891.MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. Percival. 1892 (second edition, Rivington, 1895).THE COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE. 1893. (Watson's Fur and Feather Series.)THE COOKERY OF THE GROUSE. 1894. (Watson's Fur and Feather Series.)CORRECTED IMPRESSIONS. Essays on Victorian Writers. Heinemann. 1895.ESSAYS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE, 1780–1860. Second Series. Dent. 1895.INAUGURAL ADDRESS AT EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY, October 15th, 1895. Blackwood. 1895.SIR WALTER SCOTT: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. Walter Scott Co. 1896. (Famous Scots Series.)A HISTORY OF NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE, 1780–1895. Macmillan. 1896.THE FLOURISHING OF ROMANCE AND THE RISE OF ALLEGORY. Blackwood. 1897. (Periods of European Literature.)A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. Macmillan. 1898.MATTHEW ARNOLD. 1899. (Modern English Writers.)HISTORY OF CRITICISM AND LITERARY TASTE IN EUROPE. From the earliest texts to the present day. Three volumes. Blackwood. 1900-4.THE EARLIER RENAISSANCE. Blackwood. 1901. (Periods of European Literature.)A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSODY FROM THE TWELFTH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT DAY. Two volumes. Macmillan. 1906.THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY. Blackwood. 1907. (Periods of European Literature.)HISTORICAL MANUAL OF ENGLISH PROSODY. Macmillan. 1910.THE HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE ENGLISH LYRIC. 1912. (FromProceedingsof the British Academy.)A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM. Macmillan. 1912.THE ENGLISH NOVEL. Dent. 1913. (Channels of English Literature.)A FIRST BOOK OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 1914.THE PEACE OF THE AUGUSTANS. A Survey of Eighteenth-Century Literature as a place of rest and refreshment. G. Bell. 1916.A HISTORY OF THE FRENCH NOVEL TO THE CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Macmillan. Vol. I., 1917. Vol. II., 1919.LOCI CRITICI. Passages Illustrative of Critical Theory and Practice from Aristotle downwards; selections, part translation, and arrangement. Ginn. 1903.CAROLINE POETS. Clarendon Press. Two volumes. (The complete works of certain minor Caroline Poets with reproductions of first edition title-pages, etc., and introductions to thirteen poets. A third volume is in preparation.) 1905.[Chamberlayne'sPharonnida, Ayres's works, and other rarities are here to be found.]THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.Maid Marian and Crotchet Castle;Melincourt;Gryll Grange;Headlong Hall and Nightmare Abbey;Misfortunes of Elphin and Rhododaphne.He has also edited various series: the works of Dryden, Fielding, Goldsmith, Herrick, Montaigne, Racine, Donne (Poems), Longfellow, Shadwell, Thackeray, Richardson, Smollett, Sterne, Swift, and numerous collected or selected works of English and French authors.He has written prefatory memoirs toPride and Prejudice,Merope,A Calendar of Verse,Gil Blas, J. B. B. Nichols'Words and Days, Scott'sLives of the Novelists, Staël'sCorinne, and various separate works of Thackeray, and he contributed many chapters to theCambridge History of English Literature.JAMES ELROY FLECKERVerseTHE COLLECTED POEMS OF J. E. FLECKER. Edited with an introduction by J. C. Squire. Secker. 1916.[Contains several poems not published before Flecker's death.]SELECTED POEMS. Secker. 1918.*****THE BRIDGE OF FIRE. Elkin Mathews. 1908.[In the Vigo Cabinet Series.]THIRTY-SIX POEMS. Adelphi Press. 1910.FORTY-TWO POEMS. Dent. 1911.[A reissue of the last with additions.]THE GOLDEN JOURNEY TO SAMARKAND. Goschen. 1913.[This book, which contains Flecker's Parnassian preface, was subsequently taken over by Martin Secker.]THE OLD SHIPS. Poetry Bookshop. 1915.[Published just after Flecker's death.]THE BURIAL IN ENGLAND. 1915.GOD SAVE THE KING. 1915.[Each of these was privately printed in a very small edition by Clement K. Shorter.]ProseTHE LAST GENERATION. New Age Press. 1908.[A short satire.]THE GRECIANS: A DIALOGUE ON EDUCATION. Dent. 1910.THE SCHOLAR'S ITALIAN GRAMMAR: An Introduction to the Latin origin of Italian. D. Nutt. 1911.THE KING OF ALSANDER: A NOVEL. Goschen. 1914.[Now published by Allen & Unwin.]
[This list is a selection.]
A PRIMER OF FRENCH LITERATURE. Clarendon Press. 1866 (fourth edition, revised, 1912).
JOHN DRYDEN. Macmillan. 1878. (English Men of Letters Series.)
A SHORT HISTORY OF THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF LE SAGE. Privately printed, London, 1881.
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE. Clarendon Press. 1882 (Current edition, 1917).
FRENCH LYRICS. Kegan Paul. 1882. (Parchment Library.)
MARLBOROUGH. Long. 1885. (English Worthies.)
A HISTORY OF ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE. Macmillan. 1887 (ninth edition, 1907).
[The material in this volume deals with the larger "Elizabethan" period from Wyatt and Surrey to the Restoration.]
MANCHESTER: A HISTORY OF THE TOWN. Longmans. 1887.
ESSAYS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE, 1780–1860. Percival. 1890.
THE EARL OF DERBY. Dent. 1890. Prime Ministers of Queen Victoria.
ESSAYS ON FRENCH NOVELISTS. Percival. 1891.
MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. Percival. 1892 (second edition, Rivington, 1895).
THE COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE. 1893. (Watson's Fur and Feather Series.)
THE COOKERY OF THE GROUSE. 1894. (Watson's Fur and Feather Series.)
CORRECTED IMPRESSIONS. Essays on Victorian Writers. Heinemann. 1895.
ESSAYS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE, 1780–1860. Second Series. Dent. 1895.
INAUGURAL ADDRESS AT EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY, October 15th, 1895. Blackwood. 1895.
SIR WALTER SCOTT: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. Walter Scott Co. 1896. (Famous Scots Series.)
A HISTORY OF NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE, 1780–1895. Macmillan. 1896.
THE FLOURISHING OF ROMANCE AND THE RISE OF ALLEGORY. Blackwood. 1897. (Periods of European Literature.)
A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. Macmillan. 1898.
MATTHEW ARNOLD. 1899. (Modern English Writers.)
HISTORY OF CRITICISM AND LITERARY TASTE IN EUROPE. From the earliest texts to the present day. Three volumes. Blackwood. 1900-4.
THE EARLIER RENAISSANCE. Blackwood. 1901. (Periods of European Literature.)
A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSODY FROM THE TWELFTH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT DAY. Two volumes. Macmillan. 1906.
THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY. Blackwood. 1907. (Periods of European Literature.)
HISTORICAL MANUAL OF ENGLISH PROSODY. Macmillan. 1910.
THE HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE ENGLISH LYRIC. 1912. (FromProceedingsof the British Academy.)
A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM. Macmillan. 1912.
THE ENGLISH NOVEL. Dent. 1913. (Channels of English Literature.)
A FIRST BOOK OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 1914.
THE PEACE OF THE AUGUSTANS. A Survey of Eighteenth-Century Literature as a place of rest and refreshment. G. Bell. 1916.
A HISTORY OF THE FRENCH NOVEL TO THE CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Macmillan. Vol. I., 1917. Vol. II., 1919.
LOCI CRITICI. Passages Illustrative of Critical Theory and Practice from Aristotle downwards; selections, part translation, and arrangement. Ginn. 1903.
CAROLINE POETS. Clarendon Press. Two volumes. (The complete works of certain minor Caroline Poets with reproductions of first edition title-pages, etc., and introductions to thirteen poets. A third volume is in preparation.) 1905.
[Chamberlayne'sPharonnida, Ayres's works, and other rarities are here to be found.]
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.Maid Marian and Crotchet Castle;Melincourt;Gryll Grange;Headlong Hall and Nightmare Abbey;Misfortunes of Elphin and Rhododaphne.
He has also edited various series: the works of Dryden, Fielding, Goldsmith, Herrick, Montaigne, Racine, Donne (Poems), Longfellow, Shadwell, Thackeray, Richardson, Smollett, Sterne, Swift, and numerous collected or selected works of English and French authors.
He has written prefatory memoirs toPride and Prejudice,Merope,A Calendar of Verse,Gil Blas, J. B. B. Nichols'Words and Days, Scott'sLives of the Novelists, Staël'sCorinne, and various separate works of Thackeray, and he contributed many chapters to theCambridge History of English Literature.
THE COLLECTED POEMS OF J. E. FLECKER. Edited with an introduction by J. C. Squire. Secker. 1916.
[Contains several poems not published before Flecker's death.]
SELECTED POEMS. Secker. 1918.
*****
THE BRIDGE OF FIRE. Elkin Mathews. 1908.
[In the Vigo Cabinet Series.]
THIRTY-SIX POEMS. Adelphi Press. 1910.
FORTY-TWO POEMS. Dent. 1911.
[A reissue of the last with additions.]
THE GOLDEN JOURNEY TO SAMARKAND. Goschen. 1913.
[This book, which contains Flecker's Parnassian preface, was subsequently taken over by Martin Secker.]
THE OLD SHIPS. Poetry Bookshop. 1915.
[Published just after Flecker's death.]
THE BURIAL IN ENGLAND. 1915.
GOD SAVE THE KING. 1915.
[Each of these was privately printed in a very small edition by Clement K. Shorter.]
THE LAST GENERATION. New Age Press. 1908.
[A short satire.]
THE GRECIANS: A DIALOGUE ON EDUCATION. Dent. 1910.
THE SCHOLAR'S ITALIAN GRAMMAR: An Introduction to the Latin origin of Italian. D. Nutt. 1911.
THE KING OF ALSANDER: A NOVEL. Goschen. 1914.
[Now published by Allen & Unwin.]
THEquestion, Is there or is there not a future for poetic drama?—that is to say, drama wholly or principally in verse—is very much like the question, Is there a future for sport? There are times when everybody seems to be talking about sport, times when even bookworms begin to play ping-pong; there are other periods—one thinks of the novels of George Eliot and Thackeray—when the world seems to have been without sport, and in the England of Jane Austen and the Brontës (contemporaries of Chopin) the sportswoman-composer, the "horsy" musician revealed in the pages of Miss Ethel Smyth's recentMemoirsis a figure less conceivable than the Phœnix. But through the darkest of ages sport has persisted, often as nothing more than the eccentricity of a few cranks, who in the eyes of the world about them have neglected serious affairs "idly to knock about a ball."
It was characteristic of a utilitarian age that sport and the poetic drama should have been abandoned together for what the unhappy people of that time, caught in an unimaginative and rigid scientific theory, thought to be "real life." The spirit of the age was like the sudden seriousness that seizes a young man when he first realises that he has great ability and that he must improve the universe. It is a state of mind that rests upon the conviction that one knows everything, and that what ought to be done is always as plain as a pikestaff. Once the bottom is knocked out of that omniscient self-confidence the whole policy and fabric of the time crumbles to pieces, and that is exactly what happened towards the beginning of the twentieth century when the scientists, like the decent fellows they are, began to realise that the great clarity and understanding which had fallen upon the middle of the nineteenth century was in reality a thick fog. But the old mental attitude persisted well into the present century, and is by no means yet dead. Owing to the way in which it brought the young intellectuals into practical affairs and set them studying economics and political policy, chiefly under the influence of that great spiritual survival of the nineteenth century, Mr. Bernard Shaw—who happened by a freak of nature which suggests the comic chuckle of an all-seeing God, to have a passion for writing plays—that utilitarian influence continued to pervade the drama when it had almost faded from the rest of literature. Mr. Shaw's plays are really a sort of inverted Smiles'Self-Help, and might well be calledPlays for Paralysing the Puny Emotions—all emotions being puny to Mr. Shaw and Mr. Samuel Smiles compared with the necessity of getting on—with the job! With Mr. Smiles the job is one's own career, with Mr. Shaw the career of the universe—that is the only difference. The young intelligentsia of to-day, having almost all of them become materialists under the influence I have just mentioned, have at last, however, begun to realise that the universe is not only not going to have the career planned for it by Mr. Shaw or any other group of thinkers, but also that to plan a career for the universe is like planning an "occupation" for the Sun. To imagine that in a Daylight Saving Bill you have set the course of the Sun is to imagine exactly what this social-political school of realists has imagined in its programme for the universe! Naturally, when one knows what the world ought to be, and knows one has the power to produce that ideal, one has no time to spare for sport or for letting one's feelings interfere with one's business. Supermen, like self-made men, have no time for sentiment. It is here that we find the link—which might escape the superficial glance—between Samuel Smiles and Nietzsche, who has had such an influence on the Shavian school. It explains, also, why this school was so largely "pacificist" during the war, for really its intellectual sympathies were with the Prussians, whosephilosophic justification was that they alone had the right conception—the conception of an efficient world—and that it was their task, in fact, their duty, to bring this conception forcibly into being. Such ideas always bring in their train a morality wholly opposed to sport and to poetry—a morality whose essence is the duty of preaching to the unenlightened. The drama became suddenly useful as a vehicle for intellectual propaganda.
The young intellectuals began to go to the theatre for the pleasure of hearing their theories preached at a public unable to answer back or easily to walk out, but dumbly conscious that it had paid its money to be entertained, and was having its head punched. It is no wonder that the drama suddenly became so popular with the intelligentsia. Here was an end to crying in the wilderness, to preaching your world panacea in dull tracts and essays! They had hit upon a method of getting the man in the street actually to pay to be instructed in the true doctrine, thinking that he was going to see the drama of the modern Shakespeare or of one who was "greater than Shakespeare." This, of course, was hailed as a great dramatic revival, and in so far as it brought the intellectuals back to the theatre which they had deserted, it was a revival. That is to say, it was a revival of the intellectuals, not of the theatre. You do not revive the drama by pouring into it a mass of sociological or philosophical theories, any more than you could be said to have revived poetry by suddenly writing verses about machines. One of the chief objects of art is to keep alive in our minds the realisation of the extraordinary depth and complexity of life. All the greatest dramatists do this; that is why people write books calledThe Problem of Hamlet; but the characteristic of this modern school of realists is not only that they are propagandists—that is to say, expounders of a certain point of view—but that they really believe that they understand the world. With that amazing certainty which is the hall-mark of the materialistic mind, the mind to which everything presents a hard, distinct superficies, they have no doubts about anything, and they display a set of characters who, to use a horrible but expressive phrase, are "all there." These characters are worthy inhabitants of the world as it appears to their creators. A world whose stupidity and wrong-headedness is so extraordinarily obvious—a world in which it is always so patent what ought to be done, that when one lives in it for the space of two or three hours during the play's performance one feels like a higher mathematician with a child's problem out of Euclid. This outrageous simplification and externalising of life is an intellectual mania fatal to great drama. It is the antithesis of poetry, just as we have seen war become the antithesis of sport, thereby offending the soundest instincts of the English people who, though they could find no arguments against the Prussian intellectual logic, yet felt dumbly but intensely that this simplification of war to something which shut out all ethics and all play made war damnable and finally unendurable.
We find now the war is over that this drama, whether written to get slums abolished, to expose prostitution, to draw attention to our prison laws, to expound socialism, to influence our marriage customs, to kill conventions, to explain strikes, or merely to be witty at the stupidity of mankind, is no longer in demand. There will always be a place for comedy, however bitter, savage, and loveless, and all the subjects named are traditional and excellent for the comic dramatist; but a comedy which is cold at heart, a comedy in which there is no love, occupies a very insignificant position in dramatic literature. At this moment the stage is mainly held by the stage play, which is little more than the bare bones of drama, the actors' device for entertaining an audience, resembling conjuring and the displays of acrobats. This kind of thing will always be more plentiful than poetic drama, for the simple reason that it is easier to obtain and easier to appreciate. Mr. Sutro'sThe Choice, as well asThe Voice from the Minaret, by Mr. Robert Hichens, and Mr. Arnold Bennett'sSacred and Profane Lovebelong to this category. I find them often much more entertaining than the drama ofideas which to-day lives on the first ghost of its former self, in such a play as Mr. Maltby'sA Temporary Gentleman, which has naturally won the approval of no less a person than Mr. William Archer. Mr. Archer has lately had the courage to declare that he has no use for the poetic drama of the Elizabethans (Shakespeare excepted). This is not surprising. Mr. Archer has been the champion of the school of modern English dramatists gathered around Ibsen and Mr. Shaw. It is natural to most Scotsmen to prefer argument to poetry, and Mr. Archer's animadversions on the Elizabethans only reveal Mr. Archer's limitations. But he will find that whereas a quarter of a century ago what he wanted to say was exactly what the young men and women wanted to hear, now nobody has the slightest interest in discussing social problems on the stage, andA Doll's HouseandMan and Supermanare more absolutely dead than Tennyson'sBecket. It is amazing to feel the change. I was at Oxford a short time ago, and I found that the forthcoming performances by the newly-formed Phœnix Society of Webster'sDuchess of Malfiand other Elizabethan plays aroused the same interest and excitement there as I had felt myself. It is evident that the last wave of Victorian materialism is rapidly ebbing. The Age of Drains is past. This does not mean that we shall sink back into the diphtheric state from which the Victorians rescued us; it is simply that after two or three decades during which the young intellectuals have been annually sucked into a frenzied enthusiasm for social reform there has come a reaction in which we have suddenly had quite another vision of life—a vision far more profound and closer to reality than the one concentrated in the famous saying: "What is the matter with the poor is their poverty"—which has been the social slogan of the last decade.
It is important to stress this connection of the drama with life, because if we are going to have, as I believe, poetic drama in the near future, it will be because it is the best dramatic form for expressing what we feel, and as the demand must come in the first place from the intellectuals—since in them alone are the common desires sufficiently conscious—it was impossible to get a flowering of poetic drama until the intelligentsia had recovered from the epidemic of materialism, and had begun to feel the need of something more satisfying than glittering theories of reforming mankind by pure economics. The leaders of materialistic thought have always been uncomfortable about art, and have never been completely honest. In their uneasiness as to its practical value they have explained it on the ground that art develops and trains the senses—pictures train the eye, music trains the ear, drama presumably trains both.
To knock the bottom out of this ridiculous nonsense one has only to ask: What drama would you give a man in order to train him to pick up pins in the dark? Is it any wonder that the leaders of this precious substitute for thought could not appreciate Shakespeare, and is it any wonder that under their influence poetic drama has been extinct? The deadening influence of this utilitarian materialism has not only been felt in drama, it has been present in the whole life of the community; but the masses have been less subject to it than the intelligentsia, that is why the masses on the whole have stayed away from the intellectual theatre and have patronised the purely sporting, purely poetic, utterly useless Revue, Musical Comedy, and Farce. And their instinct has been sound, as sound as it is when they ignore the offer from the same quarter of a social millennium to be obtained merely by the exercise of logic. But the result has been a wider cleavage between the people and the intelligentsia than has ever existed before, and most of the dissatisfaction with the present state of the theatre is due to this fact.
It is a curious thing, but Mr. Herbert Trench, in his fine playNapoleon, which was produced last month at the Stage Society, and made a strong impression, occasionally touches on the very idea I have been setting forth. HisNapoleonis a type of the materialistic intellectual who has a routine plan for the universe, and he harps continuallyon "order," as if "order" were something simple, something he had invented to enable the universe to run smoothly: "Your tide-work taught you poetry. I seek order," he says to Wickham—and it sounds like Mr. Shaw or some intellectual dramatist speaking. I will quote one passage from the central scene—the scene between Napoleon and Wickham—which really puts the case against the intellectuals:
Wickham:. . . . . . .Because you have no love you have no eyes;Your naked energy, working lovelessly,Be it balanced like a planet is not wise.*****How we have suffered from you, ghosts of Cæsar,Suffered through concentrations of our hope,Age after age about your glittering figures,That have polarized and crystallized and chainedAwake! Rome left our tribes one great bequest,Her law. That's in our blood, absorbed for ever.But is then Europe's many-fountained forestBubbling with ten thousand springs of life—clans, nations,Coloured by the ruddy soils from whence they spring,Is this multi-coloured, insuppressible worldTo be controll'd from one centre? Not again!To be twice Roman'd? Never!The grass will lift you as it lifts the stone.
Wickham:. . . . . . .Because you have no love you have no eyes;Your naked energy, working lovelessly,Be it balanced like a planet is not wise.*****How we have suffered from you, ghosts of Cæsar,Suffered through concentrations of our hope,Age after age about your glittering figures,That have polarized and crystallized and chainedAwake! Rome left our tribes one great bequest,Her law. That's in our blood, absorbed for ever.But is then Europe's many-fountained forestBubbling with ten thousand springs of life—clans, nations,Coloured by the ruddy soils from whence they spring,Is this multi-coloured, insuppressible worldTo be controll'd from one centre? Not again!To be twice Roman'd? Never!The grass will lift you as it lifts the stone.
Wickham:. . . . . . .Because you have no love you have no eyes;Your naked energy, working lovelessly,Be it balanced like a planet is not wise.
*****
How we have suffered from you, ghosts of Cæsar,Suffered through concentrations of our hope,Age after age about your glittering figures,That have polarized and crystallized and chainedAwake! Rome left our tribes one great bequest,Her law. That's in our blood, absorbed for ever.But is then Europe's many-fountained forestBubbling with ten thousand springs of life—clans, nations,Coloured by the ruddy soils from whence they spring,Is this multi-coloured, insuppressible worldTo be controll'd from one centre? Not again!To be twice Roman'd? Never!The grass will lift you as it lifts the stone.
Mr. Trench's play is a beginning. If we had—what is an elementary requirement of civilisation—a National Theatre, we would certainly see Mr. Trench's play there, and I should not be in the least surprised to find it a popular success. The public will never demand Mr. Trench's play; but then the public never demanded compulsory education, much as it needed it. I have little doubt but that what the public needs in the theatre to-day is poetic drama.
*****
The Phœnix Society produced Webster'sThe Duchess of Malfion November 23rd. The performance will be noticed next month. The date of the production of Dryden'sMarriage à la Modehas not yet been fixed.
*****
A series of French ClassicalMatinéesis being given by Mlle. Gina Palerme at the Duke of York's Theatre on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 2.30. The plays will be produced as at La Comédie Française, with original music by Lully and other old masters. The list of plays is as follows:Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme(Molière),Le Malade Imaginaire(Molière),Les Précieuses Ridicules(Molière),Le Barbier de Seville(Beaumarchais),Les Romanesques(Rostand),Le Voyage de Mr. Perrichon(Laliche).
This is a pioneer volume to a complete edition of Ben Jonson's works, projected by Professor C. H. Herford and Mr. Percy Simpson, and its excellence is such that it is fervently to be hoped that we shall not have to wait long for the companion volumes. When these appear nothing more will be needed, and it will be possible for the ordinary person to read Jonson without floundering hopelessly among the maze of queries whichthe text at present available raises, and which its paucity of notes does nothing to explain. Mr. Simpson's admirable introduction deals with the quarto and folio texts, the date of the play's revision, and the general question of the portraiture of humours. It contains some excellent criticism of Jonson's revisions, and Mr. Simpson comes to the conclusion that Jonson began preparing the folio edition in 1612, and his reasons are, on the whole, convincing. There are sixty pages of notes.
A writer of Mr. Arnold Bennett's eminence and great sagacity would be the last person to expect us to take this play seriously as a contribution to dramatic literature. Although it is a play of modern life in the most colloquial prose, it has less reality than the wildest and most phantasmagoric drama of the Elizabethans. We may not expect Mr. Arnold Bennett to create for us an imaginative world of his own in which there is an inner and satisfying truth, but we look to him to mirror in his own peculiarly brilliant fashion a part of contemporary life with that precision which has so often delighted us. There is nothing in this play that could not actually have happened, but it is impossible to believe in it as it is happening. Mr. Bennett has not visualised his people intensely enough; they are mere puppets borne along by the machinery of the play. This machinery is from the theatrical point of view effective, and it leaves the creation of the illusion of life to the flesh and blood of the actors, so that on the stage the play may have an effect which it can never have when read. The play, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with sacred or profane love; no hint of the tremendous reality of love in any sense appears between its covers.
W. J. TURNER.
THEREis a distemper prevalent amongst artists of to-day. I refer to the mania for group forming. We are told by grave scientists that we carry in us the germs of various diseases; the latent microbe is in our system, apt to be shaken into active life by some unforeseen circumstance. Artists, it would appear, have the germ of "group making" inborn in their systems; less quiescent than other microbes, it awaits the often trivial cause for its activity—in some cases too much fame, in other cases the gall of unnoticed mediocrity. Given, then, one or other of these causes, a series of events is set in motion.
Mr. Maguilp gathers round him various fellow-brushmen of whose work he approves and, if he is wise and is conversant with the recipe of group making, he will exclude from the number any one who will be likely to offer serious rivalry to his own position; he may also luckily procure someone who can make play with the quill as well as the brush to boost him and his band of worthies with the public. A manifesto is next issued in which the faithful band begs to be entirely dissociated from any form of art movement prior to its own, and its members present themselves purged from original influences, risen like several phœnixes from the fire. They offer, so to say, a firm breakwater to the untiring waves of mediocrity. Good! After a few exhibitions of their united work the brothers may be considered established and perhaps not unnoticed by the critics. But now, mark the subtlety of the evil genius which haunts artistic circles, the group begins to think of self-aggrandisement. "Let us have other members, let us enlarge, let us, in fact, become (fatal word) representative." But these good men do not really mean "representative," their exact intentions are rather to increase their numbers by a process of eclecticism. Alas! The most carefully selected members may develop different ideas after their election. What trouble might not be averted if we could see the mental condition, as it were, of every chicken's egg through the shell; to emphasise this point, however carefully you choose your cabbage there may always be a slug in it. So, in this little band, which has now become a "group," there are already forces of unrest, as the papers say. The stages of dissolution from this point are very rapid: the undesirables multiply, they question the authority of our original worthies, they manage to introduce other undesirables, and on all sides there is mutual suspicion and distrust of each other's motives. "I fear he intends to swamp us with the work of his followers," or "He intends to try and get control of the Group" is whispered round. Then the rot sets in. One member, for convenience A., refuses to show in the same room as B., as if the mere presence of the latter's work would corrode the gilt on his frames. Another disagrees with the gallery, a third has been maliciously hung. Worse follows, for one of our original friends secedes and forms another group, drawing others away with him: fresh manifestos are issued, and all original ideas revised, "We shall burst upon the public," and so on,da capo al fine. The public! What do they think of it all, does it interest them; do our friends, the artists, fancy that their petty strife is watched with eager anxiety? Surely to the public this formation and dissolution of groups must be as puzzling as were the military categories of the war. A layman, having once become accustomed to one artistic movement, has his attention diverted to another; on refixing his attention to the first he finds it split up into other formations. He is as a man watching a parade of soldiers, he sees each battalion form and reform, wheel and turn, flaunting the while their separate banners as they march, a bewildering kinetic display. Samuel Butler used to wonder why curates could not be hatched fullyfledged in surplice and gown, without the troublesome prelude of ordination. Could not artists be allocated at birth in a system of unchangeable groups? Now all this lamentable state of affairs is largely due to "cliquishness," and in a lesser degree to an inherent distrust of each other which all artists seem to possess. There is also another contention which hampers them in their deeper divans. One man regards the exhibition of pictures as a purely business concern, whereby he hopes to sell his work; another man imagines it to be an opportunity of displaying, for the education of the uncultured, the results of his own deep inspiration. The possible difference in their position may be that the former has to live by what work he sells, the latter has very likely a private income. If, for the sake of convenience, we introduce our alphabetical friends again, B. will despise A. for what appear to him to be mercenary feelings, while A. holds B. in contempt for amateurishness. Of the two I prefer A.'s idea because, once he has carried out his painting, his next idea (a very sensible one too) is to sell it; while B. affects indifference and thinks A. has been calculating his possible assets between his brush strokes. This idea is neither just nor relevant. What can be done for us all? We all want to sell our pictures; what need is there for pretence, and why are we at the mercy only of a few members of the "intelligentsia"? After all, I suppose group forming is in a sense a protective instinct against the dealer, though the results are so inadequate. What then is the alternative to group making, the remedy for group breaking?
At the back of my mind I have visions for the future. A huge emporium for pictures, run on business-like lines, and on a scale which will put Mr. Gattie's warehouse scheme completely in the shade. Here each artist may have his work shown in his turn, not one or two isolated pictures disseminated among the exhibits of fifty other artists, but each man's work hung in a group that all may see his development, note his improvement, and criticise his faults. Why not a Selfridge Emporium for the pictorial arts? "Woodcuts, Madame, fourth floor." Orders for drawings and paintings and sculpture might be received, and commissions for decorations undertaken in any possible style. Then imagine the satisfaction of procuring a Lewis or a Nevinson in the Bargain Basement: and the sales! "Thingswerecheap!" as Little Tich says, especially after the failure of the spring shows.
I do not imagine that Sisyphus in Hades ever wantonly let his stone roll down to the bottom of the hill after his laborious ascent, yet this is what Mr. Nevinson appears to have done in his passage up the incline of artistic endeavour. The simile is perhaps not quite applicable because, to be just, his work has seldom shown outward evidence of great stress: perhaps it were better if it had. He seems to have reached with extraordinary ease a position in contemporary art which was entitled to our respect. We are grieved then, rather than angry, to see his descent from that position. If this is his Peace work then give me his War pictures. I suppose we are all conscious that reconstruction is very slow in realising our anticipations; the business of changing from war to peace makes this inevitable, but Mr. Nevinson seems to have rushed, over-hurriedly, from one to the other. I think he has not considered reconstruction enough, for his outlook at present is chaotic and rather vulgar. This might be excused on the ground that he was pulling the public's leg, but the diversion is worn rather threadbare now. There are a few exceptions in the show, and moreover his colouring remains good, even shows improvement, and no one can deny his skill. "See," he cries, "how versatile I am. I have catered for all sorts of people!" Yes, butwhatsort of people? No, we would speak more in sorrow than in anger; as Ruskin addressed Millais in his decline—"If Mr. Nevinson were to paint nothing but apricots for four years, etc...." But we feel sure his relapse is only temporary.
The eleventh exhibition at the Mansard Gallery does not differ greatly from previous exhibitions. Probably most people have ceased to expect any great surprise, pleasant or otherwise, though there may be still a few who mount by lift to the gallery with the feeling rather of an airman approaching some planetaryterra incognita. I was assured the other day by a candid friend that "your" London Group was as dull as the Academy. This uncomfortable sort of person must give us a moment's heart-searching, but I think nevertheless that the London Group still holds its own pretty well amongst art exhibitions of to-day. With these hopeful feelings uppermost let us examine the works displayed for our notice. The absence of Charles Ginner's work is to be regretted, and the rather alarming tendency of some artists to fasten on the characteristics of other artists' work and mould them rather obviously to their own use is more marked this year than formerly. I feel sure that several of the members will have to try and throw these ingenious people off their trail, for it is disconcerting to the highest degree to find the plagiarist out-doing the original worker at his own job. One would have thought that Mr. Gertler's apple painting was the last word in that line, but some people appear to differ and you will find many feeble echoes of these rare fruit and many paintings also of the chipped corner varietyad nauseam. I do not really know to whom most sympathy should be extended: to Mr. Gertler for his apples, to Mr. Fry who is very hotly pursued by his admirers, or to the landscape painters who, I think, might almost seek the assistance of the patent law. Mr. Bomberg has returned in great force, and hisBarges, No. 31, is indeed an earnest of further excellence; all his paintings have distinction. Mr. Dickey has presented us with a very fine effort in hisKentish Town, a careful and refined painting, very beautiful in colour. Mr. Gertler's paintings at the Goupil Gallery are more interesting than his exhibit here. No. 36,Still Life, by Mr. Coria, is a painting of note, despite its cold flatness of texture. The exhibition deserves more detailed criticism than space permits. There is great character in the two paintings ofCaledonian Market, by Therese Lessore, whose exhibition at the Eldar Gallery is now open. Mr. Duncan Grant's pleasantFarmyardpainting should not go unmentioned, and there is other good work by A. P. Allinson, Mrs. Bashford, Keith Baynes, Ethelbert White, and Bernard Meninsky.
This is a vast book. Besides the usual foreword and introduction there are six chapters in which Mr. Napier most anxiously assures us that Thomson's evangelical labours and lack of artistic training in no way interfere with the exercise of his genius. This seems a little unnecessary; for we are quite ready to take him on his merits. Then comes the biography proper, and there are also five indices, a three-part appendix, and six separate catalogues of his work, besides numerous illustrations, etc. All this immense labour and care over an artist who I think was not a very significant figure among British painters. Perhaps he was overshadowed by his contemporaries Turner and Constable. He was not free, it appears, from the landscape tradition of Claude and Poussin, which he applied to his own Scottish scenery, and there would also seem to be a strong influence of Richard Wilson in his work. For all this, I think we may call him a "great little man," and Mr. Napier's book will be most valuable to the student of the history of British art.
JOHN NASH
THEseason of opera in English at Covent Garden, which opened at the beginning of November, offers a programme of unusual interest.TristanandPrince Igorare its oldest classics; Mozart, so it is rumoured, is being held in reserve for a special season of his own. The list contains hardly a single work that is not either a masterpiece or at least a novelty. Wagner is represented only byTristanandParsifal, Verdi byOtelloandFalstaff. Except for a few Puccini operas on Saturdays, the commonplace popular operas that are obliged to form the backbone of every continental opera-house's repertory have been struck out altogether. It is certainly to London's credit that for so uncompromising a choice the response of the public has been enthusiastic.
As long as Sir Thomas Beecham was fighting the battle of English opera with dogged persistence and unstinted expenditure of material in the face of apathy and indifference, and possibly the hostility of vested interests as well, there was a very general feeling that his courage and high idealism should not be hampered by a too searching criticism of his performances. The Beecham opera has by now become an established institution, and it is inevitable, now that it has taken possession of Covent Garden, that it should be considered in a more impartial spirit. It need not fear comparison with the imported opera of the summer season. It has made its own high standards; but it follows that its performances must be judged in general by the standards of its highest individual achievements.
The present season has so far been something of a disappointment. Several of the operas to be seen have been given over and over again in the provinces if not in London. In the case of an absolutely new opera insufficiency of rehearsal may be pardoned; but it is not a sign of good management when the performance of stock classics is allowed to become slack and indifferent. Sir Thomas has not been seen very often at the conductor's desk, and this is the more to be regretted, since he has a most remarkable genius for pulling through a performance which in other hands would be always trembling on the verge of disintegration. He has very little sympathy with singers, it seems. He always tends to regard the orchestra as the main thing, and the singers as mere adjuncts to it, so that an opera under his beat might easily become a symphony with voicesad libitumunless, as, for instance, inTrovatore, the composer has understood voices and written for them in such a way that nothing could ever dominate them. Mr. Goossens follows in the steps of his master, but with less genius. The performance ofFalstaffwas instructive on this problem. Compared with that in the other Verdi operas, the treatment of the orchestra is so complex as to make it almost symphonic in character. None the less, it is an opera in which the voices must lead and the band accompany, for if this is not done the work at once becomes patchy and formless. It requires, in fact, that the singers should have a strong symphonic sense, should feel themselves all parts of a continuous vocalensemblewhich must be kept going not by the conductor but by their own co-operative efforts. The orchestra can then accompany, and it must also play its part with a sense of vocal expression and individual personality. This is the real difficulty ofFalstaff. As it was, the singers had little or no feeling forensemble. I use the word in a large sense, meaning not merely the passages where several voices are singing simultaneously, but all those in which the phrase of one voice is answered directly, or even at some bars' distance, by another. Mr. Goossens did his best to hold the singers to asteady beat, but he allowed the orchestra to get very much out of hand. Mr. Percy Pitt has probably suffered too much from the old conventional Covent Garden routine. He lets the singers do more or less what they like, and allows the orchestra to play Wagner and Rimsky-Korsakov as if their music were no more interesting than that of Bellini and Donizetti. The one salvation of the opera season will be Mr. Albert Coates, who, even considered merely as a concert conductor, is in a different category from any of our English conductors. He adds to this a real knowledge and understanding of the stage, and a personality which has the quality of being able to get the best possible work out of every single person under his control. That quality is as rare as it is important.
The stage-management of the season has been, on the whole, good.Falstaffwent with plenty of activity and comic business, if with nothing else. Indeed, there seems to be a pretty general tendency to romping, which might well be put under restraint. Romping may pass with some audiences as a substitute for acting, but it can never, even in English opera, quite take the place of singing. Singers, it must be frankly admitted, are the weak point of the Beecham company. Covent Garden, partly by its own acoustic properties, partly by its traditions, which no one who enters the house can quite forget, shows up vocal deficiency only too severely. Sir Thomas Beecham possesses only one really first-class operatic artist—Mr. Frederick Ranalow. He is a real actor, equally at home in comedy or tragedy, and always a real singer. It is because he is a real singer, singing all the time, that one never misses a single word that he says. He is a musician with a large understanding of the deeper things of music. His Falstaff forms a continuous line; as King Mark he makes what with most singers is a tedious recitative into a perfect song of rare beauty. Mr. Frederick Austin is a good second; but whereas Mr. Ranalow is a singer who is also a musician, Mr. Austin is a musician who also sings. Of the other male singers there is not much to be said. Some have voices, some can sing, a few can act and throw their words out. At the best they may in certain cases do remarkably good work in one or two special parts. Among the ladies the most interesting is Miss Sylvia Nelis. At present she is little more than a singer. As a singer she goes on steadily improving, in accomplishment of technique, in diction, and in quality of tone; indeed, there can be little doubt that if she continues at her present rate of progress she will from about 1970 onwards be annually enrapturing the Albert Hall withHome, Sweet Home. As an actress she has a good deal to learn, but with her intelligence and undoubted capacity for hard work there is no reason why she should not develop in this direction. Sir Thomas Beecham has hitherto confined her almost exclusively tocoloraturaparts; it would be well to give her a chance in some part that required bright and vivacious acting rather than vocal agility. Miss Agnes Nicholls has worked so hard to become an operatic actress that one regrets bitterly the non-existence of the Beecham company in the days when she made her first appearance. As it is, she has obviously sung too often in oratorio. That is the great fault of English singing. It has only two styles (apart from the ballad concert style)—oratorio or Gilbert-and-Sullivan. Neither of these will take a singer throughFalstaff. Miss Nicholls did not happen to be in her best vocal form that evening; but her acting was surprisingly good—indeed, she was the only character on the stage, except Mr. Ranalow and sometimes Mr. Percy Heming as Ford, who gave one a real impression of a Shakespearean character. Miss Rosina Buckman has also improved, but is very unequal in different styles. As Isolde she sang with a firmer sense of rhythm than before, and if she did not act very convincingly, at least looked—in a black dress with a long white veil and a small crown—a figure of so queenly a dignity that it was not surprising to see Mr. Mullings as Tristan keeping a respectful distance even in the most passionate moments.
Stravinsky'sThe Nightingalewas the nearest approach to a novelty that has yet appeared. Evidently it had been very inadequately rehearsed. The performance fell far below the level of the Russian production at Drury Lane in 1914. Miss Nelis as the Nightingale seemed to be the only singer who was certain of the notes to be sung, and almost the only singer who was taking the opera seriously. Stravinsky's music is a good deal less bewildering now than it was five years ago. The first act has a good deal of beauty: so has the third. The second seemed merely bizarre—but the performance did not do the composer much justice. A modern opera of such intricate difficulty ought to be staged properly and conscientiously or not at all.
There has not yet been time since the end of the war for foreign artists to visit England in the large numbers which were inevitable five or six years ago. Yet even though the givers of concerts are at the moment almost exclusively natives of this country, or foreigners who have definitely made England their home, the scarcity of concert halls is being very acutely felt. Almost every day there are three concerts at the Æolian and Wigmore Halls, and when operas begin at 7.45 or earlier, music-lovers have often to choose between their first act or their dinner. What is to happen when travelling conditions become easier and the annual foreign invasion reaches its full tide?
A new and very attractive series of Sunday evening concerts has been inaugurated at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, under the direction of Mr. Arthur Bliss. The programmes have been generally of a simple and informal character, with a liberal admixture of seventeenth and eighteenth century music, either for chamber combinations or for what may be called a chamber orchestra. Designed originally to supply the artistic needs of the Hammersmith neighbourhood, these concerts have, as a matter of fact, attracted a great many of the habitual frequenters of the more central concert-rooms. Mr. Bliss intends to continue his concerts after Christmas, and has announced for performance several works, both modern and ancient, which are of exceptional interest.
The Patrons Fund, originally founded by Sir Ernest Palmer, has resumed its concert-giving activities, but on new and much improved lines. Instead of giving performances of new English works at public concerts, the programmes of which contained nothing else but the music of unknown or almost unknown composers, it is proposed to hold a series of semi-private rehearsals in the hall of the Royal College of Music, at which the works selected are tried over and properly studied, as far as is possible within the limits of a single morning. The first of these rehearsals took place on November 13th, and it was very generally agreed that the new system was an undoubted improvement on the old. One could not help feeling that the atmosphere was both more friendly and more genuinely critical. There is undoubtedly a very strong feeling among all lovers of music in this country that the young British composer deserves far more encouragement than he gets, although it must be admitted that the young British composer is actually getting a great deal more than he did twenty or thirty years ago. Rehearsals of this kind are also of great educational value to the representatives of the Press, for in the struggle for publicity it is not always the most serious and genuinely original composers who receive the most attention in this period of violent and natural reaction against the overcharged emotionalism of the last generation.
EDWARD J. DENT